It was Day 3 and we had spotted 3 polar bears so far. One a day is pretty good. After drifting away from the iceberg that B3 was on, we heard Adam speaking Swedish on the radio. Apparently while the crew were securing the ship onto the ice, there was a bear swimming in the water near the ship.

We watched her swim from the ship and go around to our right to the iceberg with the carcass where the male bear B3 was guarding it. We kept our distance from her as we didn’t want to approach a swimming bear by a zodiac for safety. She swam from left to right towards that iceberg.

She finally landed on one of the icebergs nearby on the left side. Also she did what polar bears do best, rolling on her back for good scratch after shaking water off her fur. After a good rub on the ice, she really looked at us while that male was still sleeping.

Seeing her on the iceberg gave us an opportunity to sex her. She was a healthy female. She had a scar on the left side of her hips. It wasn’t long until she decided to take off. I wasn’t sure why she swam away so quickly as she seemed to be quite relaxed. My best assumption is that there were too many things going on at that moment. She may want to feed on the carcass but B3 was on it and on top of that there was us, a big floating thing in the water. Off she went, going about in her element. We left her alone and went back to the ship. It was about quarter to 7 in the evening. We were all pretty excited from the experiences and of course a bit tired from a restless day so far.